Monthly Archives: July 2013

An article recently published on Huffington Post is by local Trans Activist, KSTEP Director and recent Tenth Voice guest, Stephanie Mott. She writes about transitioning living opposite a school and the choices she made about hiding or being public, especially given the tendency to confuse transgenderism with paedophilia.

Well isn’t this big news? The same research center which helped end “don’t ask, don’t tell” has now received a huge grant to explore transgender military service. The grant will fund 11 studies and 16 researchers over three years, for the purpose of determining if military readiness would be compromised by the inclusion of transgender troops.

From the category of “whodathunkit,” we have a video interview with long-time virulently anti-gay evangelist Pat Robertson, where he seems somewhat open to transpeople. You can watch the video, or read the choice quotes from it below.

Responding to viewer David’s question about whether he should recognize as female two coworkers who are apparently transgender, Robertson starts by saying he doesn’t “understand all that.”

“But I think there are men who are in a woman’s body,” the 83-year-old former Baptist minister continues. “It’s very rare, but it’s true. Or women that are in men’s bodies. And they want a sex change. And that is a very permanent thing, believe me, when you have certain body parts amputated, and you have shot up with various kinds of hormones, it’s a radical procedure. I don’t think there’s any sin associated with that — I don’t condemn somebody for doing that.”

What is telling about this is that it pushes another wedge between the LGB and the T, from an unusual source. I wonder if Robertson’s attitude is shared by other conservative Christian leaders in any way?

We’ve seen this happening in the Kansas City metropolitan area as well – the death of the gay bar. It has good and bad points, obviously. The only positive spin on this is that the bars are dying because more and more lesbian and gay couples can go to “straight” places and be comfortable. The bad news is that for crossdressers and transgender people, especially those who have difficulty “passing,” straight bars really aren’t safe for us yet. There will be the Looks, the Stares, the Giggles, the Comments, and, worst of all, the Confrontations.

This is why it behooves we transgender people to go out in groups, to organize “girl’s night out” events, and to establish a presence at a place to hang out or dance. The Fox used to be one of the best places for such, but with its closure many in the community no longer have a place to go. Other clubs have steep cover charges or are in downtown KC, some are too loud and too dicey, and some accept crossdressers and transgender persons only grudgingly.

What is needed is for people to establish a “beachhead” at a nice club, so club and its patrons get used to the fact that a group of transgender persons is going to be there, behaving well and buying drinks. I am trying to do this right now Saturday nights at Touché at 105th and Metcalf, but so far there are only three of us who show up each week.Shifts in attitude kill off suburban gay bars.

“I say, guess what, the gay rights movement was not started by people who wore a pink T-shirt one day on gay Pride day and went back to a closeted office job. It was started by drag queens, transsexuals, and street people who were totally flamboyant and lived their lives flamboyantly and didn’t have a conservative place to retreat to and got shit on all the time,” said Lady Bunny. “Don’t ever try to subtract drag queens from gay rights history; you will fail.”

This is somewhat old, being from October 2012, but Amanda Daniels shared it with me recently, and I found it touching, relevant, and timeless. Many of us know something of the story of how Larry Wachowski transitioned to Lana, but much of what we “know” is the result of hack-job pieces from years back, like one particularly bad piece Wired ran, which cast Lana as a sexual pervert who dressed for kinks as a BDSM submissive. There is a lengthy video at this link, but take some time, make some time, and give it a listen.

The Department of Justice has again fought for the rights of transgender persons, in this case forcing the Arcadia Unified School District in California to stop discriminating against transgender students. The issue of course involves trans toilet terror (TTT), where the Ward and June Cleavers of the district were in terror thinking that their children’s transgender peers were really child molesters, and they needed to ACT NOW…yeesh. Of course we have the transphobic viewpoint on the issue by Fox News, as well as the National Review, with the latter at least engaging in disingenuous legal constructionist hand-wringing, rather than outright hate.

He loves she. She loves he. But both have had SRS, and as a result they can still be a hetero couple. I wonder if the purpose was to show photos of the girl, or to tell their story? I’m guessing “photos.”

I have to give a slow clap to Debra J. Saunders, for writing a masterpiece of propaganda. She manages to skirt just on the edge of outright hate and disgust towards us, while taking the “just askin’ questions” tack, as well as the “can this be good for the children?” trope.

I have no idea who she is. Remember, I write for a newspaper too, and I know that often times someone who shouldn’t be writing anything more controversial than recipe cards is given a page to fill with, well, whatever. Debra is either a truly concerned person who can’t even be bothered to hit Wikipedia for research, let alone talk to an actual transgender case worker, researcher, or (gasp!) person – or she’s crafted a very well-done anti-trans political piece.

A very interesting development. There has been more and more chatter over the last couple of years about how transpeople should break free of an LGB community which sometimes tries to throw us under the metaphorical bus. Here is one of the biggest rifts I’ve seen in recent times.